Russia Calls On U.S., North Korea To Step Back From The Brink

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South Korean army tanks during military training in the border city of Paju on Friday. Jung Yeon-je/AFP/Getty Images

Russia is calling on the U.S. and North Korea to end an escalating cycle of dangerous provocations after Pyongyang put its missile forces on high alert and American stealth bombers flew practice bomb runs over the Korean Peninsula.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, speaking in Moscow on Friday, said the tit-for-tat moves were becoming a “vicious cycle” that could “simply get out of control,” Reuters reports.

Lavrov, apparently referring to U.S. actions, said Russia is concerned that in addition to U.N. Security Council sanctions aimed at Pyongyang’s nuclear program, “unilateral action is being taken around North Korea that is increasing military activity.”

As we reported earlier, the U.S. command in South Korea made a rare announcement Thursday that a pair of B-2 stealth bombers, capable of carrying nuclear weapons, had flown an “extended deterrence mission” to a range in the South. Normally, such missions are not made public.

In response, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered his medium- and long-range missile forces to be on standby for a possible attack on Hawaii, Guam and South Korea, according to KCNA, the official North Korean news agency.

KCNA said Kim had “judged the time has come to settle accounts with the U.S. imperialists in view of the prevailing situation.”

Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said Thursday that “these provocations by the North are taken by us very seriously, and we’ll respond to that.”

“The North Koreans have to understand that what they’re doing is very dangerous,” Hagel said. “I don’t think we’re doing anything extraordinary or provocative or out of the … orbit of what nations do to protect their own interests.”

On Friday, KCNA reports that Kim is leading the nation’s defense in the face of “the grave situation where the U.S. anti-DPRK [North Korea] hostile acts have reached the brink of a nuclear war.”

In December, Pyongyang launched its first satellite into orbit, demonstrating at least a rudimentary long-range missile capability that would put Guam and Hawaii in range. But the accuracy and reliability of those rockets, as well as how many Pyongyang might possess, is still a question mark.

As NK News reports, a photograph of Kim Jong Un with his military advisers released Friday shows a chart in the background marked “U.S. mainland strike plan” with missile trajectories that websites estimate terminate in Hawaii, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles and Austin, Texas.

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